In Thorium Wars, you’re a ship. A ship with guns. Shooting lasers at robots. Robot ships, robot dragonflies, robot tanks, and robot… balls. See, in the future, robots powered by Thorium become sentient and decide they don’t like us because The Terminator. So they retool their construction facilities to build more militaristic hardware and begin wiping us out because exposition. Short of that, that’s all the build you get. But, what you do get is a solid space shooter that works really well with 3D.
The opening level is scary. Like a “why did I pay for this?” kind of scary. A bland volcano level where you learn that you have to hold the throttle down button the entire ten minute level so you don’t fail the mission by leaving your special needs wingman behind. No speed runs on this one, kids. However, once that mission comes to a sweet, merciful end, you’re rewarded with two new ships. One heavy, powerful, and slow, and the other light, quick, but doesn’t bring the pain. They’re not super far apart, but you’ll notice some differences. The second and third missions make up for the first nightmare, and when you get to the third, you’re trapped in a city dome warding off an attack and protecting civvies while they try to escape. I bought the farm a few times and needed to change ships. Okay. Challenge accepted. Later levels get nuts, like tasking you with taking out THREE space stations.
For the most part, this seems designed for the 3D aspect period. The graphics aren’t great. N64/GC hybrid as far as environments and enemies go. In 3D, it doesn’t matter. The mountains, cavern walls, and buildings, are too close for comfort. You’re more worried about not becoming dust. Speaking of, the AI is pretty good. Enemies won’t just crowd you, they’ll seek out targets you’re supposed to be protecting while the grunts keep you busy. It gets fairly challenging. In addition, there’s more than a few enemy types. Skynet… err, the Thorions have fighters, walkers, turrets, drones, tanks, boats, giant manta ray things, etc. Keeps the combat from being boring.
The Recommendation
All in all, Its a solid 3D space shooter that lacks character, but for the price, there’s fun to be had. Especially since it felt like the devs were trying to capture qualities of both the StarFox series, as well as Colony Wars. Wow, someone needs to bring that back.